Daily Hassles

Daily Hassles

Hassles
1. minor fustrations and annoyances of everyday life
2. their emotional effects are fairly short lived
3. if they accumulate over a period of time this could affect our well-being
4. this could result in more serious stress reactions such as anxiety or depression
5. research into it
  1. Bouteyre et al (2007) - investigated reltationship between daily hassles and mental health of students during transition period from school to uni
    1. 1st year psychology students at French uni completed hassles part of the HSUP and the Beck Depression Inventory as a measure of any symptoms of depression that might be attributable to the hassles of transition
      1. found that 41% of students studied suffered depressive symptoms and was a positive correlation between scores on the hassle scale and the incidence of depressive symptoms
        study shows that transition is frequently fraught with daily hassles and that these can be considered a significant risk factor for depression
The Hassles and Uplifts scale (HSUP) (Delongis et al 1982) measures the respondents' attitudes towards daily situations - instead of focusing on the more highly stressful life events the HSUP provides a way of evaluating postitive and negative events that occur in each person's daily life
1. they claim that rather than major life changes, it is day-to-day hassels or small uplifts that determine our overall levels of stress
Uplifts
1. positive events that occur in the course of the day
  1. they can counteract the negative effects of hassles and help lower stress levels, improve our performance and self esteem
2. Gervais (2005)
  1. asked nurses to keep diaries for a month, recording all hassles at work & asked to rate their own performance over same period
    1. at end of month - clear that daily hassles were found to increase job strain and decrease job performance
      1. nurses felt that some of the uplifts (e.g. compliment from a patient) counteracted negative effects of daily hassles
        as well as overcoming the stress associated with their daily hassles - uplifts also improved their performance of the job
Daily hassles Vs life changes
1. daily hassles broadly accepted as comparable to life changes as a significant source of stress
  1. in an Australian study (Ruffin 1993) daily hassles linked to greater psychological and physical dysfuntion than major negative life events
evaluation
1. a number of studies (e.g Ruffin 1993) have shown that daily hassles provide a more significant source of stress for most people than major life events
  1. explantion of this: an accumulation of minor daily stressors creates persistant irritations, fustrations and overloads which then result in more serious stress reactions such as anxiety and depression (Lazarus 1999)
2. most of the data from research on daily hassles is correlational - means we cannot draw causal conclusions about the realtionship between daily hassles and well-being
3. individual differences: gender
  1. e.g. Miller et al (1992) found pets for females were commonly associated with uplifts
    1. for males they were more likely to be seen as hassles e.g. time and money

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	Created by samantha_x about 10 years ago